"I was at home and suddenly Czechoslovak flags started to appear, everyone had them hidden, my father too, but we had a big flag from Lovosice, which my parents hung on a huge house, so it was over the whole window and it was hanging down. My father wasn't very skilled, so it was handmade and not in a good way. My grandmother wanted to hang it, but she couldn't do it. She was standing on the first floor window, I was afraid she was going to fall, she was struggling and she said, 'Hold me,' I was holding her by her skirt, but I was sure she'd fall. So we didn't succeed in hanging the flag, and in a moment two men with helmets came and rang our doorbell, they asked: 'Why don't you have a flag hanging?' Grandma said: 'I can't do it, come and help us. ' - 'No, we don't have time, we're just checking, you better get it right, there are flags everywhere and you don't have one.' So these patriots came, but when we wanted them to help us, they didn't have time. Flags everywhere, we didn't have one, my father wasn't at home. That lasted about two hours, and these two were passing by again, shouting: 'Take down the flags, the German tanks are coming, and they will shoot at houses with flags'. So suddenly the flags disappeared again."
"I think it was Tuesday, we were just wandering around and we'd always come across a group that we'd join. So these two older boys had a ladder and they were erasing German signs. It was on Tuesday and it was a May Day. They were painting over the German signs and they had this short ladder, so they said, 'Come here, little one, come here, you're going to hold the paint container for us.' So I was holding the container for them and two German soldiers were passing by, with the nurse and one man on the cart, and they were just laughing at us, they didn't mind it at all. I told my dad about it at home and my dad said, 'That's good, you're a patriot too, you’re great'. And the next day I told my friend Pepík Kozák: 'I'm great, I erased the signs here,' and Pepík got angry: 'Why didn't you tell me?' But the next day he said: 'Man, you've got it bad, my dad told me that parents of everyone, who does this, will be shot. He warned me not to get involved.' And I got scared: 'Jeez, I don't know where my mum is, my dad will be shot, my grandma is old, what's going to happen with me..."
Vladimír Mašín was born on 1 February 1936 in Ústí nad Labem, but grew up and spent most of his life in Lovosice. In October 1938, he moved with his father, a postal clerk, to Prague, while his mother stayed in Lovosice after the occupation of the border area, which was then part of the German Reich. In September 1942, he entered primary school - the pavilion wooden school on the border of Vršovice and Záběhlice, which inspired the famous film Obecná škola (The Elementary School). In August 1943, he went with his mother Marie Mašínová to the Gestapo in Litoměřice; because of her anti-German activities (helping prisoners of war), she was to go to prison for two weeks, but she did not return until the end of war. In Prague-Zahradní Město, he experienced the Prague Uprising and returned to Lovosice in June 1945.
His mother in Sokol folk costume at the Terezín Remembrance Day in May 1946 with Mrs. Kukla (wife of a fellow prisoner), Vladimír Mašín on the right, his father on the left
His mother in Sokol folk costume at the Terezín Remembrance Day in May 1946 with Mrs. Kukla (wife of a fellow prisoner), Vladimír Mašín on the right, his father on the left
